


Aksepya

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Ramayana fics [2]
Category: Ramayana - Valmiki
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Hostage Situations, Oneshot, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 14:42:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15709308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Ruma, during the reign of Vali.aksepya (Sanskrit): to be challenged





	Aksepya

**Author's Note:**

> This contains off-screen/implied rape and themes of alcoholism and depression. Be warned, this is fairly depressing and there isn’t really a happy ending.

It is touching, if faintly embarrassing, to see Tara and Vali embracing each each other and weeping tears of joy. Ruma stands in the doorway, silent but patient, as they whisper to each other, Tara bemoaning his pallor and exhaustion after a year of no sunlight and fighting a demon, Vali saying over and over again that he knew he would one day hold her in his arms again.

“I’ll order the cooks right now to prepare a feast,” Tara says, only for Ruma to intervene. “I’ll handle that -- you have been apart for so long, do not spend one more minute apart.”

She could have sent a servant to do it, but she wants to tactfully give them some privacy, without being overt about it. And besides, she is _glad_ to have her _jeeth_ back. Hopefully, with some rest and good food, he will come down from his current rage, and they can welcome Sugriva back.

* * *

Neither three days’ rest nor proper meals nor even reunion with his wife and kingdom will convince Vali to summon Sugriva back.

Tara and Ruma exchange aghast looks as Vali rants. “He was a coward, who struck at the first opportunity, and appropriated you. He stole my kingdom and my wife away from me, and I intend to seek recompense from everyone who doubted me!”

In his fury, with his teeth bared and his eyes bulging, Vali looks so menacing that Ruma cannot help but shudder. Tara, cool as ever, strides up behind him and places a soothing hand on his shoulder.  “I also doubted you and believed you dead -- will you seek revenge against me? On every vanara in Kishkindha who bowed to him?”

Ruma’s breath catches. Vali has never been able to resist a challenge.

But for all of Vali’s flaws, his love and respect for his wife remains supreme. “Every word that falls from your lips is wisdom, how could I ever want to strike against you?”

His expression softens as he guides her to stand in front of him. “No, _pathni,_ I shall cut down that coward and that coward alone. He took my kingdom and my wife and almost my life, and from his day forth, I shall have _his_ kingdom and _his_ wife.”

Tara sends another wide-eyed look at Ruma, but this time there is a laugh tugging at her lips. Vali must still be drunk on heady victory and rage.

* * *

Ruma stands at the window, an evening breeze rustling her hair and her nails digging crescents into the clay windowsill.

“It’s only justice,” Vali says from somewhere behind her. “Sugriva appropriated Tara, and now, I appropriate you.”

Ruma closes her eyes, opens them again, closes them. When she raises her trembling hands to clench at her chest, she leaves two sweaty palmprints on the sill. “We all believed Tara a widower. My husband is alive.”

“He is dead,” Vali says, and she can picture his sneer without turning. “I will kill him, and you will have no one left but me.”

Ruma does turn this time to glare at him. “There is still time to reconcile with him. Reach out to him, welcome him back, and all will be well again.”

Vali shakes his head. “You sound so much like Tara.”

“Tara -- your beautiful, wise wife who loves you so much. Would she want to share you with me, after being deprived of you for so long?”

“She was content to share herself with Sugriva and you!”

“There is a reason Hanuman and Jambavan fled with my husband, rather than stay here. How do you intend to rule this kingdom bereft of its wisest ministers?” Ruma is grappling, desperate. _His weakness has always been his desire to prove himself against anyone who doubts otherwise._  “Prove yourself worthy of them, and prove them wrong of what they believed of you.”

The thrill settles in his eyes, and too late she realizes that she issued the wrong challenge.

Never mind. She squares her shoulders and breathes deeply. She is not a widower; her husband still lives. That ought to be enough. Vali is an honorable king.

* * *

Vali is not an honorable vanara.

Ruma opens her eyes blearily, unblinking in the morning sunlight.

She had knotted and double-knotted her _pallu_ firmly around her.

She had insisted on retaining her maids’ presence.

She had grabbed the frame of the window where she stood.

She had stiffened every muscle, held every limb iron-rigid.

Nothing helped.

She begs Tara, her _jeethani,_ who always has an answer, what can she possibly do? Tara is tearful, fretful. “I thought -- I thought -- his rage would not extend to you.” Her lips flatten into a thin line. “It is wrong, what he is doing. Wrong.” Her reassurance is sincere and heartfelt.

It does not help.

She considers escaping, fleeing to wherever Sugriva and his renegade vanaras are: Mount Rishyamuk, if her instincts are correct. Vali catches her before she has made it ten strides from the palace, and he smiles, doubling the number of guards and restrictions placed upon her.

In a last-ditch effort, she closes her eyes as much as possible. When she does open them, she thinks of how in the dark, it is easy to exchange Vali for Sugriva: from the build of their muscles, to their soft grunts of exertion, to the curves of their tails.

It does not help.

* * *

She prays he will spend as much time as possible with Tara; surely he will want to make up for lost time with his beloved wife.

He does, but he seems equally interested, if not more so, in venting his fury upon his brother’s wife. In the daytime, he will gleefully tell her of the assassins sent to harass Sugriva, of the reports that her husband’s days are numbered. Ruma graces him not with a single flutter of her eyelashes, but in her heart, she imagines, she pines for, she screams out for her lord. There is no respite for her, not even when Vali is away. Once these halls were home to her and her husband; now they are a prison.

One evening at dinner, she is drinking wine, when she considers what the night will hold, and pours herself another, if only to stave it off. In truly cliche fashion, one glass leads to another, and by the time Tara enters the room, she is well and truly tipsy.

Tara issues no recriminations, but rather smiles tentatively and sits beside her. “It has been difficult for me as well,” she wonders out loud. “I had half-consigned him to memory, and to have him show up suddenly on the steps of Kishkindha… When he came back, I thought everything would return to as it was before.”

She swallows loudly. “But I was wrong.”

Ruma offers no response. Tara’s lips purse. She picks up a glass of wine, twirls it by the stem, then drinks as well.

Seconds or minutes later -- Ruma can no longer assess the pace of time -- Vali enters and plants himself at the table. Until now, Ruma has refused to eat meals with him. She will not take part in any trappings of domesticity that she cannot help, but now wine fogs her senses and stupefies her limbs.

Vali grins. “Never before have I seen my two wives together. What brings about this happy change?”

No answer.

He pours himself a shot and downs it in one gulp. “Perhaps I will have both of you at once tonight.”

The remark pricks Ruma’s stupor, and she looks at Tara with what must be naked, helpless fear in her eyes. Not such an indignity -- not that --

Tara is equally disturbed, and takes charge. She offers her husband another glass of wine, encouraging him to drink his fill. “I heard today that one of your assassins got into a fight with Sugriva -- drink to that victory, will you not?” An anxious, apologetic glance in Ruma’s direction that she does not see, so intent is she on Vali.

Tara coaxes drink after drink into her husband, and if fear was not scraping Ruma’s spine, she would marvel at how her _jeethani_ knows how to play Vali like a flute. At one point, Angad comes in, and Tara welcomes him loudly, saying, “And Angad’s skill with his bow is much improved -- drink, drink!”

Angad looks thoroughly uncomfortable and mystified, but Ruma cannot care.

It takes many glasses -- it always took Sugriva a good two or three tankards to pass out, and Vali is even more solidly built and enormous than his younger brother. Ruma discretely keeps glasses ready for Tara to all but tip down his mouth, and finally, Vali droops onto the table, snoring prodigiously.

Tara slumps back in her chair, showing a bone-deep exhaustion that Ruma can suddenly feel as well. She shares a nod with Tara and moves to lift Vali up, but as soon as she stands, she totters sideways. The room swims.

Hands steady her, and she sees the murky outline of her nephew. He is speaking words, and then two maids come to guide her back to her chambers. She senses rather than sees two other maids doing the same to Tara, while Angad takes charge of his father.

* * *

Ruma wakes with a pounding headache. She hears that Vali’s hungover is even fiercer, and exceeded only by his joy at the exploits of his two wives together last night, if only he could remember.

She does not care. Numbness becomes her new armor, her second skin. What more is left to live for? Sugriva is gone, the kingdom is at Vali’s whims. Perhaps if she and her husband had been blessed by a child, she would have found purpose now, but nature had not cooperated and Angad had proved to be enough for her anyway. But under this new regime, he is his father’s creature first and foremost, and while he may still be respectful, she knows better than to trust him now.

She begins taking wine at night, to wash away the day’s pains and steel herself for the night’s torments. Soon it becomes the evenings, and then the afternoons, then around noontime and eventually in the mornings.

Tara quickly figures out -- she is always quick -- and scolds Ruma. She orders that the maids hide all the flasks of liquor from Ruma, and since she is still the undoubted queen, they obey her. Tara eventually relents, though it is not because of the constant withdrawal headache that Ruma contends with, nor the dinners uneaten, nor the irritability and nausea, nor even the hallucinations.

It is when Ruma catches Tara drinking one evening. Tara holds her sister-in-law’s eyes for one, two, five, ten defiant seconds before she drops her face with a half-sigh, half-sob, and offers Ruma a glass.

The wine is always freely available to Ruma after that.

* * *

She is having a rare sober day when Sugriva’s voice echoes through the caves, daring Vali to come and fight. Rumors of Hanuman and the two hermits have swirled around, but she had not bothered to listen. There had been other assassins and other vanaras sent by Sugriva, all futile.

But this? Him here in the flesh, when he knows of Vali’s ability to leach half his opponent’s strength? Tara begs him not to go; Vali can never turn down a challenge. He hefts his mace over his shoulder and bares his teeth in his warrior’s snarl.

For once it is Tara who drinks early in the morning.

* * *

He comes back, battered and bruised, but crowing his triumph. He takes Ruma that night, rougher than he ever has before, but she does not bother with liquid armor for once. Anticipation burns away all her pain, all her fear, and long after Vali has slumped into the sheets, she paces around her moonlit chamber, too excited for sleep.

As she suspected, Sugriva comes again. Tara begs, Vali refuses, and this time, Rama shoots an arrow directly into his heart.

Tara and Sugriva weep afterwards, as though they had not shed enough tears before. She expected that, and consoles them, but beneath it all elation sings in her veins.

Their first night together back in Kishkindha, Sugriva asks hesitantly whether she would not like to wait, but Ruma takes him into her arms and silences the queries spilling from his mouth with her own. But once she lies beneath him and feels the once-familiar weight of him pressing her into the mattress, her heart pounds, her vision swims, and she pushes him off of her with a yell. He draws away, immediately lighting the candles and wrapping a _chadar_ around her, but the damage is done, and for the rest of the night she shudders with nightmare and memory.

They try again, and again, in the nights that follow, but the easy passion they had shared before is gone. It seems incredible that what she did with Vali she once did with Sugriva, and that she had enjoyed it so. Her husband is considerate, but still a man, and gradually frustrated as well. At last she reminds him that he has another wife, and that it is both his right and his duty to share her bed as well.

He leaves, guilt and relief in his eyes. Ruma holds no bitterness as she watches him go, truly; if they find what happiness or comfort they can together, she cannot and will not begrudge them it, not when there is none to be found in her own heart.

Alone, she pours herself a glass of wine.


End file.
